The Wipers- Youth of America
The Wipers- Over the Edge (from ???)

another great Portland band. perfect guitar sound. perfect underground alt post punk goodness. just a perfect band, period. fuck, i just can't get over that chorus guitar sound.

yeah, i know... most of you probably hate pink floyd. and i do too. the majority of their music is mind-numbingly boring, egotistic and perpetually in the same key. if i ever hear the fucking wall again i'm going to beat some teenage stoners to death with their own bong... This, however is THE pink floyd, with the one and only Syd Barrett, lysergic saint, musical visionary and infamous 60s casualty. Syd's lyrics always prove who the real talent of the band was. 40 years later, this thing STILL sounds like it fell out of the sky. the origin of space-rock, jangly paisley psych, epic psychedelic grooves... re-released in both stereo and the supposedly superior mono mixes (which is kind of dumb since it's digitally remastered and therefore ruined) and a bunch of neat bonus tracks. a new way for gnomes to say hooray?

PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

BONUS TRAX

by request:

Anthony Braxton & Wolf Eyes- Black Vomit

PJ Harvey-White Chalk

tetes lourdes

oh yeah... 70s french heavy metal goodness. this compilation has enough cheesy riffs and falsetto screams to fuel your late-night drinking binges for weeks. these bands definitely worship under the altar of the almighty heavy metal axis of Heep, Deep Purple & Black Sabbath, except most of these bands are actually pretty good, as opposed to the majority of their english speaking counterparts. crank up the stereo and sit down with your favorite cheap beer, because it's about to be 1973 all over again!

GRINDERMAN is Nick Cave's new band, which is basically the same line-up as the Bad Seeds, but with more of a loud-and-scary-as-fuck sound like the Birthday Party. Play at maximum volume.

LES RALLIZES DENUDES- LIVE 1972
speaking of loud and scary, LRD have been doing it for 40 years in the murky depths of the Japanese underground. Without them there would be no High Rise, Acid Mothers Temple, Boris, Keiji Haino, etc. Yes, they rule. This show has limitations (as in it was recorded by some guy with a tape deck) but it's still pretty killer and makes "The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes" sound tame.

"that wolf eyes shit is bananas" -anthony braxton

Wolf Eyes & Anthony Braxton Live in Victoriaville

Prefuse 73-Preparations

Beirut-The Flying Club Cup

I am in Ohio. It's been both refreshing and a bit difficult. However, I've managed to push aside my anxieties for the moment. Thank you Harp. Thank you Leinenkugel. Thank you tequila sunrise that tasted like chalk.

I want to make sex with every guy in this town. It's sick how much I missed American men. Especially straight men.

if anyone was interested in the japanese erotic record posted earlier, you might want to check out different waters, who has a bunch of reissues of rare pink records from the seventies. and be sure to check out the meiko kaji record, she is a badass femme who will kick your ass.

Silvester Anfang- Kosmies Slachtafval

a brand new disc from Belgium's premier satanic cult/funeral folk ensemble, trading in their acoustic instruments for electric guitars and keyboards to create some evil sludgey jams that are up there with warmer Milks' "Radish on Light" for creepiest record of the year. dig it.

The Black Lips-Good Bad Not Evil

Sunset Rubdown-Random Spirit Lover

Sally Shapiro-Disco Romance

For around a year now I've been having these sporadic disagreements with my cigarette addiction. It's been happening more or less in a two to three day cycle. And, as is the case for most people my age who smoke, it's inextricably linked to my drinking habit. Usually after the second or third day of drowning my hangover in alcohol I'm ready to take a day or two off of everything. So I'm in the middle of that right now. It's especially fantastic as we've arrived in our Parisian flat on the 15th floor of probably one of the most hideous buildings on the face of the planet, in a section of town that is probably one of the tackiest urban areas on the face of the planet. I'm not exaggerating. The flat is owned by a friend of a friend's family and the organizing of our stay was more than a little complicated, especially considering the French tendency to leave out many important details whenever brokering anything more involved than a handshake. Such as directions to the building after we got off the metro or the fact that we would have to negotiate the key out of the tyrannical hands of reception once we arrived. The people who was generous enough to lend us the flat are a family of rich Iranians who fled to Paris in the late 70's at the start of the Iranian Revolution. Apparently they decided to bring their taste in grotesque home furnishings with them, as the entire flat is decorated in Louis XVII factory knock-offs with dusty moth eaten slip-covers half draped over them. There are about a
million individually framed, faded photos of the family, the overwhelming majority of which no one is smiling in. And in the living room is prominently displayed a gigantic portrait of who I can only assume was/is the matriarchal head of the household. The view is even better. It's like living in an Air video or those old stock films of the gangster era Las Vegas strip right before the casinos are all imploded. No one actually lives here. All the kids are grown up and the parents, or at least the mother, spends most of her time in Iran. So for the next three days I'm hiding away in the part of Paris everyone has forgotten about. I hope they don't decide to demolish this beautiful, ancient monstrosity while I'm inside.








Eric Copeland-Hermaphrodite




Eric Copeland is a member of Black Dice and Terrestrial Tones. Hermaphrodite is his first solo recording and precedes the new Black Dice record, Load Blown, which comes out in October. There are some familiar themes inside of Hermaphrodite. It overflows with the same textural emphasis and expresses the same penchant for Terry Riley style repetition I've been hearing from more than one direction so far this year. However, rather than wearing it emblazoned on its sleeve, Hermaphrodite's appeal is in its subtle, more intimate references. Sort of like a diary entry of referneces.

Don't get it twisted. I'm not suggesting that Hermaphrodite is even as contemplative as a Black Dice record. On the whole, this music is downright celebratory, yet another parallel to the work of Mr. Copeland's peers.

In the next couple of days I will attempt to catch up on the blog. Things have been absolutely insane and exhilarating. I've always been, for the most part, comfortable with my decision to forego higher education and focus on my music for awhile. But I've never been so confident about that decision. This has been hands down the most rewarding and amazing experience of my entire life. I can't wait to share all the juicy details with you.










M.I.A.-Kala




Until then, listen to this. Not much I need to say to sell this one I'm sure. I won't say just it's my favorite release of the year just yet. But I have already probably listened to Kala as much as Person Pitch when it leaked.

som imaginario 1971
the second self titled album from one of brazil's weirdest bands. nothing quite as killer as "morse", but still equal to their first s/t. check it.

transitions

Mushroom with Eddie Gale


Masterpiece. Many things to do. More later on this god damn thing. Here's what you should know: Eddie Gale (Blue Note superstar), Mushroom (San Fran psych collective). result: one more reason to quite your day job and start eating dirt.

ummm... what? i guess i'd rather have andre shilling organic food than diet soda or something, but this is still bizarre and unsettling. is he going to rap about the wonders of fresh produce? maybe a song about freshly baked organic bread or the ridiculous WF deli? the olive bar?


anyway, tonight i present to you an album by the great Mr. Kim Fowley, or as this album claims, Kim Fowley Jr. somehow existing as both an outsider musician and as one of pop's top producers, Kim is possibly one of the weirdest of the rock and roll mutants: he started out as a kid in Hollywood with actor parents, started his first band with Phil Spector and Sandy Nelson, recorded countless 60s novelty singles (Alley Oop, Nut Rocker, etc) and sat underneath the piano during Zappa's "Freak Out" sessions before moving to England and working with every up and coming star in the mid 60s (cat stevens, yardbirds, etc, etc) then coming back to the states to record hundreds of gold records, recorded a bunch of Kiss albums, started the Runaways in the late 70s, pioneered synthpunk in the 80s, and still had time in between all the gold records to make a couple thousand solo albums with absolutely no commercial potential. oh, and he's REALLY FUCKING CRAZY! "Son of Frankenstein" is one of his better albums of the 80s, featuring the notorious spoken-word freakout 'Invasion of the polaroid people' and a handful of bizarro pop hits in typical Fowley stream-of-consciousness style. if you, the audience, approves, maybe i will post his late 60s solo albums where he sounds like iggy pop on mushrooms backed by booker t & the MGs. now THAT'S entertainment!

i'm not sure what to think of joanna newsom. yes, she's a good harpist, but her voice sounds like a pixie stoned on nitrate singing bjork covers. plus she hangs out with that pedophile-folk creep devendra banhart. but maybe i'm just horribly pessimistic about any musician that gets recognition by the music magazines (i am, after all, a bitter and cynical human being that is unable to appreciate 'popular' music). either way, this album has some nice songs that are good for a rainy day like today, and it also has some songs that are pretty forgettable. don't believe the freak-folk hype, kids.

milk-eyed mender

I had a dream about Dusty last night. It happens every couple of months. They're always really pathetic. And when I remember them in the morning I always feel this odd, slightly self-righteous sort of loneliness. There's a pattern to it. I could probably make it into a song or something.

Anyway, now there's a German in the room who speaks very good, very concise English. Full of command sentences. He ends up sounding very demanding. I find him hilarious. But he doesn't know that.


Here's a pretty solid release from the pseudo-legendary Bronx duo Camp Lo.




Camp Lo-In Black Hollywood